A blog about a family who left on a major sailing trip starting in the Great Lakes.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Food - Day 970

The canned chili from Costco is the best I have ever tasted. One of our goals when we finally cast off of our slip is to live without refrigeration. Refrigerators are expensive in equipment and in amp hours. A sailboat with solar power and a wind generator can create per day about as much power as your car battery can store. So all the things we do like lighting, radio, computer, water pumps and water maker all have to stay within this tight budget. Refrigeration tips the scale forcing you to run your engine every day. I hate running the engine. The best part of leaving port is shutting the engine off, no matter how light the wind is. I hate paying for fuel. I like free solar power. This means life without a refrigerator. This means that we are learning to eat from a can. Both my wife and I grew up eating fresh or frozen fresh vegetables from the garden. We were not looking forward to the canned thing. We have been surprised, the canning people have gotten better at making their wares seem like real food. Either way we are finding out what we like in the canned food department and learning how to live without the refrigerator. Except for the ice cream . . .